overlap

There’s a couple of ways it can go when you put a lot of effort into setting up a venue. You can go down the utilitarian route that means all you need to do is replace lightbulbs and sweep the floor. Or you can go to town and end up with a deliberately decorated art space. While the red neon WHAT THE FUCK’ has gained its own reputation, it’s the sign that says ‘Please don’t talk over the quieter bands’ that catches my eye on the way in. The walls are covered with mostly black and white posters of mostly thirty year old pictures, a mix of the New York of the Ramones, Blondie and Warhol with some rather less interesting pictures of women with minimal clothes from an older era. There’s a string of seven inch vinyl records hanging along the wall, the odd candle burning on a table top and enough colour in the red paint on walls and ceiling for it to be a pretty warm and friendly place. Your average identikit chain venue this isn’t. Going out on your own from a moderately successful, briefly charting band is always going to be easier than leaving a leviathan like U2. I loved the Pipettes’ manufactured indiepop far more than I’ve ever been excited by the choreography-led likes of Beyonce, but on your own any kind of show is going to be tricky. So it’s to Gwenno’s credit that she manages to combine playing her keyboard, using some sort of pedal to vary the sound and sing along with whatever sampled rhythm tracks she’s using, and also, er, pull a few shapes now and then. Where the peroxide crop looks like recovery Kylie, the net effect of the electronic sounds is more Pet Shop Boys, and while I can’t say I’ll be desperate to hear everything Gwenno does next, the overall it's more than pleasant enough. The School, on the other hand, is a band that I have been waiting to see again for more than year. There’s been a couple of gigs on inconvenient days, and one I even had a ticket for, but one way and another it hasn’t worked out. So I’m delighted to get to hear a few new songs as well as those that have become regulars on my mp3 player. This time it’s a five piece line-up on stage, and I can pay a bit more attention to who is who, not that it matters so much. What we get is the familiar sunshine pop tunes, and a few more new ones that are presumably on the forthcoming album, in the following sequence. Double-quotes mean I'm not certain of the title. I Want You Back "Gonna Be A Long Time" Valentine And Suddenly "Is It True?" "I Can’t Understand The Reason Why" "Hoping And Praying" Shoulder All I Wanna Do "Is It True?" includes a moment not unlike the 'she wrote upon it' part of Return to Sender, "Hoping and Praying" might possibly owe a tiny something to Bacharach & David's Wishin' and Hopin', as well as having a fabulous handclaps intro, and the familiarish moments of sweeping big 60s pop make the sound of The School at once retro and modern as the shuffling drums, the subtle guitar lines and the perfectly placed baby glock notes wrap around Liz's voice like a winter blanket. While I gather there's been some mildly critical suggestion that the album title isn't all glossy, shiny and happy, I reckon there's a lot to be said for the bittersweet mix of upbeat melodies and heartbreak songs to give that little bit of balance. And from where I'm sat, the distinct mix of instruments and voice/s is precisely what makes The School sound so special. School's in, as Alice Cooper never said. * Loveless Unbeliever is the title of The School's forthcoming album, available in February on Elefant records, and the title is taken from the lines 'loveless unbeliever/ better than the rest' from the song 'Let It Slip', which coincidentally is a perfect headline for lazy album reviewers everywhere to use when they describe The School's album! I stayed on to watch Lisa Milberg's band, and while it was fine for something totally unfamiliar to me, I'd run out of descriptive powers by this point. But y'know, The School's album - buy it, when it comes out.

Labels: gigs, Gwenno, Liz Hunt, The School